Odoo ERP implementation for heavy-duty automotive parts retail chain

About the Customer

Great American Inc.’s mission is to be your total parts solution in the trucking industry. Offering replacement parts, dedicated service, and a knowledgeable staff, they are here to serve you with the best customer experience and speedy delivery options.

The Challenges – Before Implementing Odoo

GA used AutoPower software and a custom ecommerce website, both of which were outdated and couldn’t be enhanced to meet the business’s needs. The AutoPower software is outdated, with interfaces that are 20 to 30 years old, which makes it difficult to train staff. GA has local customers shopping at its multiple retail locations, ecommerce customers, and an extensive catalog with nearly a million products.

They had an online portal for authorized customers (part of ERP) and a separate public-facing website for general customers (not integrated with ERP). Product pricing was challenging to manage. There were overrides for specific customers on specific products, and it was hard to track where overrides should be updated based on cost changes.

Supplying and receiving products was also a challenge. They had many multi-line orders with various products and multiple methods for supply, including pickup, drop-shipping, delivery by parcel carriers, on GA’s truck fleet, and others. GA also needed a way to deal with products with “cores,” which could be returned for credit.

The Solution – Advanced ERP with Odoo

With Steersman’s Odoo implementation, GA’s ERP has been updated to modern technology. Steersman’s CPQ and Dynamic BOM modules automatically create the necessary bill of materials for certain kit-style products assembled in stores. Steersman’s shipping label app creates shipping labels for FedEx, UPS, and USPS.

Steersman custom-built functionality for automotive parts retailing/distribution:

• Managing product “cores” on customer and vendor orders and monitoring “core” credits and expirations.
• Pricing for products, product groups, and customer groups is formula-driven, allowing for automatic price setting across an entire catalog based on list-down discounts or margins. Odoo sale order entry enhancements function properly for use at cash registers, automatically processing deliveries, invoices, and payments.

Steersman’s ecommerce website’s front end allows customers to shop online easily. You can read about some of GA’s ecommerce functionality here.

The Results

Steersman’s implementation of Odoo ERP streamlined GA’s business and enabled the company to continuously enhance its systems. Odoo oversees GA’s business activities, including:

• Order management
• Product demand
• Inventory picking
• Shipping and shipping notifications
• Charging customer cards
• Monitoring product core balances
• Financial Reporting
• Updating the website and the website catalog

Odoo apps used

Odoo app spotlight

Steersman’s custom Odoo modules used for the auto parts retail business

Some of the custom modules GA uses include:

• Product cores – Manage products with cores and core balances for customers and vendors
• Pricing engine – Rule-based price setting for hundreds of thousands of products for customers with varying needs
• Advanced SO processing – Configurations for auto-delivering, invoicing orders, and determining sales tax jurisdiction
• TaxJar integration – Looks up sales tax based on the point of delivery (or pickup) and submits transactions upon invoicing
• Clover Connect / Fiserv payments – Payment processing for website and sales users, as well as physical terminals for use by customers
• PIM – Used to manage product information better
• Dynamic BOM – With only a handful of rules, create thousands of unique and accurate bills of materials
• Steersman Configurator (CPQ) - Define rules for product option selection defaults and incompatibilities
• EasyPost shipping – Rate shop, estimate, and ship parcels right from Odoo
• Shipping workstations – Define printers for documents and labels to print from Odoo directly to office printers

How Steersman can help you

We offer superior stability and data security and are continuously improving on top of Odoo. Steersman will make Odoo work for you and your business.

Contact us or learn more about our pricing.